The thread about Lost Race cars has got me thinking. Oh dear not another of Amco's ramblings I hear you say; nearly finished now and then we can all get on with deciding spelling. Cars that were lost, then found, rallied and sometimes raced, all before the big money hit the Classic and Historic car scene, indeed before the Classic car scene had even got under way. There is a big push today to find old race cars, and the thread about old Shellsport cars makes interesting reading. These machines have suddenly acquired a value, in cash and historic terms, way beyond what the original builders could have foreseen. My mate Barry who figured in story about Motorcade 81 is a consumate story teller. In the late 60's and early 70's he and I were hunting the highways and byways, barns and hedgerows, warehouses and lockups for that most illusive of cats......the Jaguar. During our forays into back- yards, pig-stys and chicken-coops in search of lost and forgotten cars we had a series of adventures and coincidences that you would only read about. And we thought, why not, lets put it all down. We did, and came up with a name.......'JAGNET...being the reminicences of a couple of big game hunters' . You may remember if you are old enough ,and before telly, a series of evening radio programmes called 'DRAGNET'.... thrilling detective stories, probably starting after 9pm when all the children had gone to bed, as they did in those days. Well we sort of borrowed the title, as we considered ourselves detectives following clues and leads, and altered it a bit to suit. The original is quite long so I will just put some extracts on here for your amusement. Needless to say, like all good detective stories, we had a successful conclusion to our endeavours. Barry ended up with a 1950 Mark 5 Jaguar, and I bought, first a 1948 Mark 4 then a 1935 SS 1 tourer. Barry's car was in very nice order requiring little in the way of restoration and he competed in a lot of JDC rallies over the years. He then went to live in heartland America to take up a teaching position at Kansas University. He was reluctant to sell the MK 5 so I offered to store it for him in one of our farm sheds. Needless to say I also got to drive it. He was away for several years but eventually returned, retrieved the car, and because he had money burning a hole in his pocket after American wages, had the car completely restored....a body off job. I think I would have left it as it was but never mind it now looks a million bucks and lives in Napier. My car, the 1948 MK4 was also in very tidy condition but after running it for a couple of years had it repainted and upholstered. When the SS 1 became available, I had been pestering the owner Dave Hill in Tirau, I advertised the MK 4, and the Emslies, father and son, motor body builders in Dunedin, flew up, bought the car and drove it home. The car ended up in the Queenstown Motor museum where it stayed for some years until that place folded and an Auckland JDC member bought it and has it to this day. The SS 1 came home as a rolling chassis, a trailer load of body bits, and 6 tea chests of sundry parts. Was a big job piecing it all together as I hadn't dismantled it, and it had had a fire in the wiring which had spread to the wooden frame. I was lucky that nothing was missing and eventually it all came together. I kept it till 1983 when I sold it to a chap in Perth WA. Was quite a business getting it there.....RO/RO cargo ship to Sydney...$1250, then train to Perth, $1250.....across the plain etc. It arrived in one piece...undamaged. Amazing!!! The amazing coincidence was that the buyer had a couple of years previously bought my old XK120, not from me of course, the one I had bought from Des Wild in ChCh, and he was able to take a photo of the two cars together on his front lawn, something I was unable to do. The last I heard of the SS was that it was entered in an auction in conjunction with the Melbourne grand prix. Dont know whether it sold but the auction estimate was $120.000. Not bad for and old bus that had cost me $2000!!! OK, enough of the preamble, next post will be the first of a few extracts from JAGNET.